On Glove Fights

Feilding Star, Volume IX, Issue 110, 17 April 1888, Page 2

On Glove Fights

i [Communicated.] 1 Aye te Casar qtii tutU morituril ' "Hail! to thee, Cesar, thoae who arr about to die, salute thee." This was the chant of the old Roman gladiators when they appeared in the \ arena before undertaking the mortal » struggle, with every chance of death r in front of them, for the amusement of a savage populace who varied their blood-thirsty recreations by occasionally casting such Christians as they caught to be torn to pieces by lions. Brutal as such things were, there was a grandeur in both the men who sang 5 the above chorus, as well as in the , beasts that were used as public execu- . turners. How muck have we degenerated in these days ? Instead of seeing s men who played for life, we now paj to see a lower class of *ni?nfj» tfrip to i bruise and batter one another, until 1 with smashed face, broken nose, and . eyes swelled to a black unseemly l mash. We have had the satisfaction of , paying or receiving money for an , exhibition lower and more debasing i than the heroic acts that were prei luded by the above heroic cry. We > don't cast Christians to lions, there being few Christmas now-a-dayt who would not recant to escape the fate, 1 and we have no lions to cast them to, | but we train the domestic rooster in ' humble imitation of the savage pro- [ clivitaea of the people of old. Bah! my masters ! to such have we fallen. Education, in which we- have been surfeited, seems to have taught us ■ nothing better ; but stay-in saying " us," wo ougut to say the minority, and unless we are to be governed by the minority it is .surely time tint the feelings of the majority should carry weight We suppose, however, that so long as the minority, low and debased though they be, possess votes, our representatives will fear to taokle a question that means, are we gradually to become bratalised in our children, and contemptible as we are in the eyes of civilised nations, or are we to make a united grand effort to stop it ? All the arguments as to manliness vanish when we consider how cricket and other out-dour sports improve the physique, and enlarge the understanding, creating an equality between all proficients, whatever their stations in life, while no one can pretend that a bull neck, bullet head, and broken nose ore at ell calculated t* raise or ennoble our species. -